In general it is a good practice to keep your theme and plugins up to date because of improved security , compatibility, and performance. How long is a “long time”? Definitely backup your site and know how to restore it before doing a update in case something breaks. You won’t loose your plug-ins and your widgets won’t be lost, but they may not appear where you want if the theme has changed the location of the sidebars, but that is unlikely.
For peace of mind you could create what’s called a staging or test server. You can do this on your local computer. You can use the free Duplicator plugin to create a copy of your site and install it within MAMP (for Macs), WAMP or XAMPP (for Windows). For something that is little more user friendly, use DektopServer by ServerPress.com. The $50 premium version is necessary to import the Duplicator backup, but it would be $50 well spent because it could spare you a headache and lost time.
Could you be more specific about what trouble you are having with links to the site?
Thread Starter
ark-1
(@ark-1)
Thank you so much Mr. Graynotgrey!
Long time means several months since I posed and I’m sure more than year since I upgraded or really paid attention to the back end. I have several other sites and I’ve been more enthusiastic with them.
As for linking problems, here’s a link to article I wrote. (http://taste.fourseasons.com/2013/03/48-hours-in-paris-cruising-the-cookbook-fair-and-sipping-tea-at-the-george-v/ ). The link from my name to my site didn’t work. So they added the name of my website. That link still doesn’t work. They said they’ve checked at their end and all seems to be fine.
While a lover of websites, and a bit of a closet graphic artist, I’m a disaster at back-end stuff. I really don’t know how to create a backup file (my host is godaddy).
Usually I go for the upgrade and don’t bother with backing up (it also usually includes closing my eyes, crossing my fingers and hoping for the best). But this time I decided to be wise, not foolish, ergo here I am.
Your further assistance would be SO very much appreciated.
Anne
Thread Starter
ark-1
(@ark-1)
Oops, make that several months since I posted. (not posed)
The easy stuff first.The link on the fourseasons.com is not coded correctly. They have the address of your site, but the underlying link is:http://taste.fourseasons.com/2013/03/48-hours-in-paris-cruising-the-cookbook-fair-and-sipping-tea-at-the-george-v/www.annekleinberg.com.
It should be: http://www.annekleinberg.com
As for the upgrade, it does not look like the Magazine Basic theme as changed that much and from the outside it does not appear that you have that many plugins installed, so chance are that nothing negative will happen when you update and you should update for he reasons I noted previously.
For peace of mind you should have a backup of your site and database. GoDaddy does not appear to offer any easy method for doing this. For someone who describes herself as a “disaster at back-end stuff” I would recommend using the following plugin: WordPress Backup for Dropbox (http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/wordpress-backup-to-dropbox).
It is a popular plugin, well documented and supported. There are also instructions for restoring your site. You do need a Dropbox account, but you can get a free one and it should be sufficient for your site.
There is a similar plugin for Google Drive, but it is not as popular or well documented:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-google-drive/
Good luck.
